


With Eyes Wide Open.

by soennavind



Series: Chronicle of a Life Untold [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, M/M, World War II, and everything hurts, where love means nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:36:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soennavind/pseuds/soennavind
Summary: DISOBEDIENCE WILL RESULT IN DISCHARGE.





	With Eyes Wide Open.

Steve didn’t punch a real Nazi until February 1944. He’d punched Hitler 200 times and then some, and he’d had dreams of fighting hostiles—or rather nightmares of hostiles fighting him—but he’d never envisioned the moment where his fist would actually connect with the fairly fragile bone structure of a German’s face. And when finally it did, he broke 3 knuckles and fractured his wrist in 2 places.

It was also the first time that he’d killed a man at point-blank range with a single precise spearing of the arm.

It burned in his mind for years afterwards how easy it had been.

The Howlers had been covertly stationed in Alsace for reconnaissance of a medium-sized HYDRA base in late January, ’44. It was a smaller mission because of the weather—foggy, grim, and obstinate—but not ignorable due to their proximity to the German border. Patrols were liable to pass through, so stealth was of the essence. Silence and surprise would be their weapons, and orders had been to do a sweep-over, and make good on the gathered information: destroy all of everything they found but at minimum cost to enemy knowledge of their position.

Not a hard mission; they’d done it before. Scout and destroy, as it were.

What they had not accounted for, nor could they possibly have thought to account for it, was when they discovered that their intel was flagrantly incorrect. The HYDRA base in Struthof had been turned into the Natzweiler-Struthof camp.

Bucky couldn’t even do the recon. 

He smoked all the cigarettes in his reserve pack one after the other, and didn’t say a word to any of them. His eyes were overcast, and he passed Steve a series of looks that told him to not make a fuss of it. Steve complied of course, redistributing the team’s resources to make up for Bucky’s momentary failure. Steve thought it seemed justified, but Bucky he could see was mentally torturing himself for his inability to tackle the mission.

Monty had to take Bucky’s place as right flank, but in spite of Steve’s insurmountable faith and trust in Monty’s skills, he couldn’t help but feel like he was exposed. He imagined a swift bullet lodging itself in his side where Bucky wasn’t standing—imagined it so vividly he felt phantom pains.

They opened the recon at 0400 with Bucky and Morita—who was their designated medic—minding camp, Steve at point, Monty at right flank, Dugan left flank, Jones centre, and Dernier in the back. It was a heavy sort of morning, where the clouds hung lower than normal and their sweat turned cold with the wind. The trees bore down on them; black pines and dark wood. A stale wind blew over the French mountains, and Steve gripped his Garand as his breath stuttered in his throat. It wasn’t fear for his own life that made his heart clench: it was the smell on the wind.  
It was rotten.

He already knew where this path went. His mind was already there, waiting for him at the end of it.  
The camp was quiet when their group of 5 crept between the trees to look in through the wire.

Roughly 20 squat huts sat in 2 lines along a central dirt path that cut through the camp. 14 officers strolled leisurely past the huts, draped in sharp blacks and in grotesque medals that glinted in the dim torchlight. Dernier swore quietly under his breath. 

They’d heard about the camps amongst the whisperings they’d gathered on previous missions. The teams who were stationed in Italy and moving north had apparently encountered some no-name shit close to the Alps, but the Army had been decidedly mute and clamped down on rumours. They could only imagine why. The Howlers on the other hand was the only unit operating on the Continent; they were alone in their discovery.

If the smell was pervasive enough to reach them miles into the forest, Steve knew down to his steel-protected toes that this was somewhere people were brought to die. He’d only smelled stenches like this after raiding the worst HYDRA bases where the graves couldn’t cover up the decay of their failed experiments.

He was happy Bucky wasn’t here. Not for this one. He couldn’t have done it, couldn’t have stood by his side as whatever they were about to see unfolded before them.

“Qu’est-ce qu'on va faire? Capitaine? Veux-tu les libérer?” Dernier whispered. The funeral bells tolled in his voice. He’d asked for the sake of it.

“We finish doing recon. We can decide what to do with…them—this—afterwards,” Steve replied enigmatically. Dernier’s eyes shone in the half light. Pity, fear, and loathing swirled there but Steve could do nothing but meet his eyes with quiet vitriol. Dernier pitied him for being the one to have to make the call; for being the who would have to write the report detailing this hell-hole.  
Steve led them around the camp. They stuck to the small strip of trees north of the camp but didn’t waste energy devising tactics. The Nazis had no reason to believe they were expecting company.

They found that the camp was divided into 4 main sections: the barracks, the officers’ chambers, the medical facility (fuck), and the mines. There were no visible graves, just huge swathes of overturned black earth. Steve’s belly churned with acid.

2 teams of SS patrolled at all hours by the looks of it, and the rest of the armed officers were perched in the sentinel towers or on break in the chambers. The sentinels were presumably armed with Mausers, whilst the patrollers were armed with nicked French guns.

The morning got no lighter even as the larger hours crawled nearer. Their hearts grew heavier by the minute. The stench was intolerable.  
Then, at 0600 a piercing whistle whipped through the dense air. The shock of it made Steve’s finger spasm on the trigger. Roughly 400 people shuffled out from their filthy huts and stood in perfect lines along the central path. Monty dipped his hat over his eyes.

These people were skin on bones, teeth in head, cloth over corpses.

“Nehmen Sie zu Linien!” a powerful voice cut into the air. Steve felt it like a knife to the gut. “Kramer, ich mache einen Anruf,” the man spoke formally to his superior, who lazily nodded his consent. Steve wished suddenly he didn’t speak German.

And then the endless list of names began. Steve lowered his head, unable to look any longer at the prisoners.

A man, or perhaps it was a woman, it was difficult to tell with how they looked—shaved, waxy, and dressed in graveyard greys—keeled over. He simply sank to his knees, eyes closed, and let his body collapse. His face struck the ground with a crack, but he’d been dead before he hit the ground. No one moved, and the roll call went on as if nothing had happened.

Steve had said he didn’t want to kill anyone, that day he’d first spoken with Erskine, but the cold, white stone of pure hatred in him craved bloody retribution. A cruel vortex, centred on Berlin, was consuming the world and it was sucking millions of lives into its chasmic maw just so that these pale monsters could torture innocents in lost towns like Struthof. 

Steve didn’t realise he was trembling until Jones put a hand over his shoulder, breaking his internal maelstrom. Jones’ eyes were dark and concerned. Steve looked around at their group; they were all staring at him.

He felt ashamed, and he cast his eyes into the dirt.

“Recon completed. We return to camp.” Steve cast one last look to the prisoners, and witnessed 1 guard slinging the corpse over his shoulder and carrying it effortlessly to the fields of black earth. His perfect black uniform didn’t even crinkle under the weight of the corpse. 

Steve very nearly lost it. 

He didn't realise he'd gone so far as to aim his Garand at the man, with his finger resting dangerously on the trigger, until Jones forcefully lowered the rifle. Steve's breathing was ragged but he came back to himself. His livid fury, however, did not subside, and he holstered the rifle violently without putting the safety on.

Dernier and Jones exchanged worried looks.

They trudged, their guts in their boots and their bleeding hearts on their sleeves, back towards their makeshift camp. The silence of the trees blared in their ears—that is, until it was broken by the crack of a branch. All five of them froze in their tracks. A split second, then, screaming bullets.

They dropped for cover, shots flying overhead. The Nazis were 40 metres off, maybe 45, judging by the sound of their guns. Steve motioned for Falsworth, who had the most powerful gun of the five of them, to take head beside him. He crawled hurriedly over. The screaming continued. The others opened fire. One Nazi fell almost immediately; the other two were harder to see in the dark.

"There are two more of them in the bush. One on the left of that thick birch—clip him," Steve ordered. Falsworth fired 3 consecutive shots, and they were met with that distinct sound of bone being cracked apart by steel, and a shriek. Steve looked down the scope and fired a single shot aimed directly at the man's forehead.

His aim was true, and the bullet killed him via his blue, blue eyes. Dernier fired the last shot. The oppressive silence of the forest engulfed them once more, and they moved towards the patrol squad to check for survivors. To Steve's unending horror, the first Nazi shot down was still alive.

He was young, younger than them, and foaming at the mouth. His black hair fell across his eyes and his hand spasmed on his gun as he attempted to take one sorry bastard with him. Steve lifted his Garand to put an end to it, but the motion was interrupted by his dying words.

"Für den Führer Du verdienst zu sterben. Du verdienst zu sterben. Du gottverdammte Schweine...Schweine!" He spat and dribbled blood, his front teeth smashed and his raw gums exposed. Steve saw white. He dropped his rifle and snapped a flat fist across his cheek. The impact killed him instantaneously, and his eyes rolled back into his head. Steve's hand hurt, his knuckles burning.

"Capitaine..." Dernier intoned quietly, concern lacing his voice. Steve shook his head and motioned with his left hand to move out.

"I broke something. It'll be set within the next hour and half. Cover me," was all he said. He felt neither shame nor fury now as he looked at the deformed face of the Nazi. He felt white and blank and glazed. They trudged onwards, pace quickened. 

Morita greeted them with a nod once they got back, but he felt the heavy atmosphere without a word being said, and spared them of having to share any of the information they’d gathered.

Bucky was nowhere to be seen. Ostensibly, that just meant that he was hidden in the undergrowth. Steve felt reassured knowing that Bucky, with his ice eyes and sureshot attitude, was watching over them. 

Camouflage and concealment had become his greatest weapons since Austria. They’d never talked about it; they didn’t have to. He could feel it in the changes of Bucky’s body: in the way his muscles resembled tightened coils and whipcords; in the way the skin around all 10 of his knuckles was absolutely fucking ruined; and in the way his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground he walked over.

It made Steve livid, but what was done was done and for now, it was in the past. Bucky was here now, away from them. They just needed to keep trudging, and maybe finally, finally, one day this would all be over. 

Morita had received a code while they were gone. 

SUSPEND INTERACTION. DELIVER REPORT TO 367.189 AT 0300. END MISSION. DISOBEDIENCE WILL RESULT IN DISCHARGE.

Steve observed it with a cool fury. Their position had evidently been deemed too important, and headquarters had too late received confirmation that HYDRA was not operating in any meaningful way in France. The Howlers, however, didn’t operate in tandem to any of the national regiments; they were a confidential, cross-national unit and secrecy took prevalence over tactical victories.  
“Disobedience will result in discharge” was a threat tailored for him.

They packed up and started moving west to the collection point. The rain started falling before the sun had set. It suctioned their boots into the mud, and crept insidiously into their uniforms. Steve hadn’t felt as cold as he did then since the winter of ’36 when he had hypothermia. 

He didn’t see Bucky again until they made camp 20 clicks west of their previous position. He looked worse than before; the stubble looked like disease on his grey skin and his hair lay flat against his head despite its thickness.

This time when they erected their camp, they put up tents. Steve and Bucky shacked up together like always. Morita got with Jones and Dumdum, and Dernier got with Monty. Dumdum took first watch. His eyes were hollow, and he wasn’t observing for hostiles despite how trained his eyes appeared to be. Steve didn’t have the strength to summon inspiring or comforting words, not just then, so he simply patted him on the back in what he hoped would be a solid enough display of brotherhood to ease Dumdum some.

“Thanks, Cap,” he said and smiled, but the corners of his mouth looked like they were being pulled back by fish hooks. Steve was about to open his mouth, hoping to find some way of uplifting Dumdum when Bucky’s voice shivered through the air.

“Stevie. In here,” his voice was disembodied, but Steve could see his shadowy form shifting inside their tent through the slit; there was an edge of desperation to his tone.

“Yeah. Yeah, hang on, Buck. Be with you in a second,” Steve tried to reassure him, but Bucky stuck his head out the slit, and the unhappiness was unmitigated. Dumdum smiled again, and this time it appeared to be more genuine.

“Don’t worry about nothing, Cap. I got my back—you take care of his,” he chuckled mirthlessly but truthfully. Steve sighed in thanks, and decided it was probably best everyone was left to their own devices. 

There was nothing he could say to them now.

Pulling apart the flaps to their tent, Steve peered cautiously inside. Bucky was already half-undressed, and in the process of removing his boots. His hands were spasming and the laces fell repeatedly through his fingertips. His face was screwed up in angry concentration.

“Buck,” Steve began before being cut off by one of Bucky’s more intense glares.

“Shut up. Please, for the love of God, Steve, shut up,” he said quietly. “Just…get over here and help me.” Steve saw him then, suddenly, for everything that he was. In an abrupt flash of understanding, he could see the both the Brooklyn streets and the prisoner, the stallion and the fawn. The torture and the confidence, wrestling for dominance.

He paced deliberately over to Bucky, moving obviously. On a different day, Bucky would have punched him in the arm for treating him like china, but today china was exactly what Bucky was. He reached Bucky and sat himself down in front of him, overtaking the other’s task of untying the shoes.

“Are you going to sleep tonight?” he asked under his breath; the concern was crystal clear. Bucky said nothing at first, letting the silence become a round bubble of attention.

“I might. Later on. Not now. I couldn’t, right now, it would be-” he stopped himself, but Steve knew he spared no one by omitting the word “nightmarish” from his description. He pulled Bucky’s left boot off, then his right. He looked at Bucky’s feet with a grim, dull horror as he removed the socks as well. He used to draw them so often, what with how hot New York got in the full swing of summer; their rolling shapes and well-kept nails were wonders to him then. But now, dirt was layered in every crevice and the toenails were jagged and chipped. The skin was flaking and borderline tumorous with the number of calluses he’d developed over the course of his service. His feet were, in a word, disgusting. It filled Steve with a mute despair that Bucky, who by nature styled and preened to a fault, had no choice but to let his own body decay.

Steve put his hand over Bucky’s and pulled it nearer, so that Bucky’s hand lay flat on his chest over his heart. Steve wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to comfort, but Bucky’s large hand felt like an immediate source of kindness. Bucky’s eyes fluttered shut as he focused on the feeling of Steve’s body.

Steady rhythm.  
Steady warmth.  
Steady presence.

Bucky began to crumple. Steve put his free hand over the nape of Bucky’s neck and pulled him down so their foreheads met.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeated, before crushing their lips together. It was an awful kiss, and it hurt because that’s what this all was; suffering and unrelenting horror. War was killing them both, killing them all in each their own way, and Steve wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted to go home—he felt suddenly sure that home was a delusion. The only reality he knew now was the heat of Bucky’s desperate kiss and the damning images of humans who weren’t more than a pair of eyes in a skull. And worst of all, the fact that this couldn’t be the only one.

There were more out there.

And they were helpless to stop any of it. They were only a small unit with limited human resources. They could not fight the war alone. They could only obey, and let the war play its course according to the higher forces operating their lives and their futures.

He tried to think of happier times than here, and inevitably his thoughts strayed to Sarah and to their sunny apartment on 58th Street. The two were bathed in a golden glow, but the Rogers’ plain family grave inexorably rose to the forefront of his mind, as did the memory of their landlord pushing Bucky down the stairs in front of their apartment building when he kicked them out. 

Happiness was such a small thing he realised as their kiss deepened and Bucky groaned. It was fleeting and fragile, like a pretty bird, and certainly didn’t exist under the black clouds of war. This brief moment of relief was not happiness, nor could it ever be.

The last 10 years of his life had been haunted by the local and very real threat of crippling poverty and by the looming fear of conflict on some distant European front, but he and Bucky had been happy. Poor, yes, but hopeful and happy.

Hope didn’t exist out here.

Happiness didn’t exist out here.

The shaved head of the dead prisoner burned like a brand behind his eyelids, and his fingers began to bruise Bucky’s body, mottling his skin.

The Europeans were so fucking good at this, he thought bitterly, at sucking the world into their power politics. If one went down, they all did, courtesy of their capacity to tangle everyone else by the feet and drag them by heels. His father and mother had paid for the previous war. Now he and Bucky were paying for this one.

He gripped Bucky by the back of the head as their teeth gnashed, and together they fell away, soundlessly, wordlessly, obliviously. Sleep didn’t come to either of them, but their heartbeats became so perfectly synced as they lay together that they felt as if they had fallen asleep with their eyes wide open.


End file.
